Anne McElvoy: Yes to more women on boards — but not via quotas

I cast an envying glance at Germany, where supervisory boards will shortly have 30 per cent of women on them

Wednesday 20 November 2013 11:49 BST

Let us hail a small shuffle forward for working womankind: Liv Garfield is the new female chief executive of Severn Trent, thus joining the handful of female FTSE CEOs who could convene around a very small boardroom table.

Ms Garfield may do wonders for the water industry but began her
reign with a rather odd declaration.

“For any female to do well in business,” she told an
interviewer, “you have to forget that you are female.” Really? One
look at Ms Garfield’s PR pictures shows an attractively presented
woman, with expensive highlights and even more expensive pearls.
Not so much someone who has forgotten to be a woman but a tough
business practitioner proud of her femininity and happy to display
it.

Still, her words echo broader uncertainty that
pervades the argument about women’s professional progress. You can,
she argued, “earn your place based on your own qualities and
abilities”.

But if the modern successful businesswoman is just about
fulfilling Henry Higgins’s demand that a woman “be more like a man”,
this does throws up some problems for corporate logic. Severn
Trent’s year-end report insists that “a diverse and inclusive
culture is a key factor in business success”.

This approach is commonplace and explains why even the sleepiest
firms are waking up to the idea they need “pipelines” of women who
can reach top executive posts. Even if the phrase reminds us of
Mitt Romney’s clunking “binders full of women”, it’s better than
just being left un-piped.

Last night, at the London Press Club, we debated how much this
mattered in journalism. The spread of opinion on quotas ranged from
“when can we get them?” to “hideous idea”. And yet a point made
from a Sky TV executive who has increased female representation in
interviews and debates was that if you don’t enumerate objectives
and put a figure on what you intend to achieve, precious little
happens.

So lots of us who would feel quotas would distort a fair race
nonetheless jib at the idea that we should shrug for the next
decade as senior managers turn out, by some weird alchemy, to be
male. The overwhelming number of authoritative voices in
broadcasting are chaps and bosses don’t feel this is an oddity in
2013.

I don’t think this is only because enough women don’t want these
roles or fail to “lean in” or aren’t confident or whatever the
latest excuse for corporate inertia may be. Some of these things
may be true but they can be addressed quickly. They don’t get
changed till those at the top, male or female, think it is
important and crack on with it.

So while I hold out against those fiendish quotas, I do cast an
envying glance at Germany, where supervisory boards will shortly
have 30 per cent of women on them and warm to the IMF’s Christine
Lagarde, a market liberal who once announced to a shocked business
summit: “You don’t like quotas. I don’t like quotas. We have to
have quotas.”

I get the feeling that Ms Garfield would rather swim naked in
the Trent than sign up to that. But she is a woman with a big job
and a powerful pulpit in this debate. So let’s hope she uses it —
when she remembers that she is, in fact, a woman.